Drowning
by Seaglow
Summary: "It was an interesting experience; drowning that is. Something new, something I had never thought would happen to me. But I must admit, it was absolutely terrifying and the worst thing I have ever experienced in my entire life. I was never the same afterward."


**Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia, rights go to the respective owner.**

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It was late July, the sun was high in the sky and Mathias had the brilliant idea of going to the lake. It was over ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit, so no one really had any complaints. There are five of us, by the way. There is Berwald, Tino, Mathias, Emil, and me, Lukas. We were somewhat close friends, and had decided to head to our cabin up north for part of the summer. Emil and I are technically the only ones actually related, being brothers. Anyways, as I said, it was hot and there was barely any breeze coming in through our thrown open windows, so we all actually agreed with Mathias' idea for once.

We had a very large lake just a few minutes walk away from our cabin, and whenever we visited the cabin we often found time for a quick swim. It was peaceful, and a very remote place, though it's silence ruined by the loud splashes that came from our little group. I wasn't one for swimming, and I usually just sat in the shade with a book, Emil usually following in suit or playing games on his phone. Berwald, Mathias, and Tino were the only ones that actually went into the water, though Emil did do it on occasion.

Like today. It was hot enough that Emil left me in my patch of shade to join the others in the water. I didn't mind, I barely noticed his absence to begin with. I was perfectly content with staying out of the water, preferring to avoid getting into those ridiculous splash fights. The other's usually left me alone on days like these, but there were always those days where Mathias found the need to try and convince me to join them.

Today was no exception.

I narrowed my eyes as the Dane grinned down at me, water dripping down onto my bare legs. I wasn't an idiot, I wore shorts in over ninety degree weather. I looked up at him, shielding my eyes from the sun.

"You should come join us!" He said eagerly. He always said the same thing.

"Nei, I'm staying here." I replied, looking back down at my book.

"Aw, come on, Lukas!" He insisted, his grin never faltering.

I rolled my eyes and shook my head in response. Usually after this little conversation he would go away. But something was different today.

"Lukas, it's almost a hundred degrees." He pointed out, raising an eyebrow at me.

"I know, so what?" I scowled, glaring at him.

"So, that's a lot, even for you." He replied, a mischievous glint coming into his eye.

I hated that look. He was always up to something if he had that look. "I said I wasn't coming."

Mathias shrugged like it wasn't an issue and bent down, pulling the book out of my grasp and picking me up in his arms.

"I'm not taking no for an answer this time!" He said cheerfully, turning and heading for the water.

I was surprised at first, though recovering quickly and struggling in his grasp. I managed to get half-way over his shoulder, though he merely kept a tight grip on my waist and legs and kept me from escaping completely.

"Let me go, Mathias!" I snapped, still struggling against his grasp.

"Nej~!" The Dane said cheerfully, grinning widely at my hopeless struggles.

I felt an increasing sense of annoyance as he waded into the water. I really did not want to get wet, especially considering I still had my shirt on, though my shoes left with my book in my patch of shade thankfully. I spotted Emil and glared darkly at him, but he merely rolled his eyes in response.

"See? Isn't this-" I never found out what Mathias meant to say, for that's when he fell.

Mathias had been calmly wading into slightly deeper water so he could be sure I would get wet, and had stepped on a loose stone. This stone had rolled underneath his foot and he fell forwards, bringing me with him. I didn't even have a second to take in any air as I went under the water, the Dane's arms suddenly releasing me.

Now we actually didn't know much about our lake. We just knew it was a lake and assumed it was like any other, gradually getting deeper the closer you got to the center. This wasn't the case with our lake. It had a sort of ring of rock around it under the water that slowly sloped downward for a few feet. This was the shallow end, and it went all around the lake. But there was an end to this ring, an edge. The ring suddenly ended, and then there was nothing else. The lake just kept going down, how deep it actually was being unknown. I didn't know this, and neither did anyone else.

But I quickly found out when Mathias fell. He had been lucky, able to quickly find footing on the ring of rock and go back to the surface, assuming I had done the same. I hadn't. I was still going down.

I was a fairly strong swimmer, but my struggles against Mathias had weakened me, and I was soon frantically clawing at the water. I could still see the sun hitting the top of the water, but it was slowly getting farther away from me, darkness starting to gather around me the farther down I sunk. My lungs were straining to hold in what little air they had, and panic was starting to settle in my mind. I ran out of air quickly, my mouth opening and water quickly flooding into it and throat. My limbs were growing numb from exhaustion, and I soon found myself just slowly sinking.

I gave up on trying to reach the surface, letting my arms and legs go limp. The darkness was quickly settling around the edges of my vision, and the light was nearly gone by now. I found an odd comfort in just falling slowly down, the velvety darkness enveloping me in it's cold caress. I was freezing, but I barely noticed. I watched through half-lidded eyes as air bubbles floated from my mouth and up towards the surface, swirling together in an intricate pattern that I did not recognize.

I knew I was dying by this point, my mind hazy, my vision blurry and nearly completely taken by the darkness, my limbs numb and heavy. I didn't really care, I guess. I didn't exactly have much to live for, except Emil really. I had some secrets I would have liked to tell before I died, but fate was cruel. I closed my eyes, enjoying the rushing feeling of the water as it surged past me. I was floating in the darkness now, perfectly content with just letting it carry me where it wished.

It was an odd sensation at first, starting in my legs. It was a tingling feeling that slowly spread up my legs and up my stomach and chest. It split at my shoulders, going down each arm and all the way to my fingertips. I was suddenly colder than I had ever been before, and as the tingling spread to my head, I started choking. A pounding started to grow in the back of my skull, and the tingling sensation came again, though spreading more quickly the second time. I didn't know what I was choking on, but it felt like a type of liquid.

My eyes snapped open and I was instantly blinded by the bright sunlight. I didn't spend too much time thinking about my temporary blindness as something quickly flooded my mouth, my stomach in knots. I rolled over onto my hands and knees, vomiting up whatever decided to come out. It looked like mostly water, or some sort of liquid I didn't recognize. As I finished puking, I realized I was trembling violently and that I was completely soaked, water streaming off me in little rivers. I coughed in a raspy voice several times, and noticed I was crying. It was hard to tell at first, with water also running down my face, but the familiar sting in my eyes I felt when crying and my blurry vision gave it away.

I couldn't hear anything, only the muffled sounds of what I assumed were people talking. My trembling had gotten worse in a matter of seconds, and I rolled over onto my back as my arms gave away underneath me. The light wasn't as blinding anymore, so I was able to see the familiar blue sky. I wasn't sure where it had come from, since I had been drowning only moments ago. A blurred shape soon appeared in my line of sight, though I couldn't make it out at all.

I don't remember much after that, just blurred shapes moving in and out of my line of sight and the feeling of something being draped over me. Only one thought stuck out in my head, and it would forever be stuck in my mind, lurking in the darkest corners.

I almost died.

After that day, I was different. I did my best to hide how much the experience shook me, and I did it well for the most part. It was just those few things that I was afraid would give me away. Like how I constantly refused to go to the lake, how I woke up in the middle of the night to go puke, how I grew more irritable with the less sleep I got. Thankfully, none of the others ever seemed to notice. However, I grew wary after a certain encounter with Mathias.

I had woken up in the middle of the night again, third time that week, and hurried to the bathroom to puke like usual. After about three minutes of this, I rinsed out my mouth and flushed the contents down the toilet. When I opened the door, Mathias was standing there. He looked like he had been standing there awhile, and honestly surprised to see me walk out. He raised an eyebrow at me, a curious look on his face as he gave me a quick look over. I didn't say a word, and neither did he. I quickly went back to my room, and felt his eyes on my back the whole way down the hall.

I was cautious after that encounter, and worked even harder to hide what was happening to me, even though I wasn't sure myself. Mathias was watching me now, I felt his gaze on me whenever we were in the same room together, and he had started staying behind when the other's went the lake. His excuse was that he wanted to keep me company, but I had a feeling that wasn't it.

Next, he started asking me questions. They started out innocent enough, like how I was doing and if I was recovering alright, but they soon grew more serious. The more questions he asked me, the more defensive I grew. I didn't need him, of all people, knowing that almost drowning had shaken me so badly that I was having nightmares almost every night, and that I was vomiting into the toilet. I also had the feeling that I had insomnia as of recent, for I was now finding it hard to fall asleep each night, laying awake for hours in bed and thinking about the nightmares.

The nightmares were the worst part for me. On night's I actually fell asleep and didn't wake up to puke, I instead woke up shaking and covered in cold sweat. They were always the same ones, the same horror-filled dreams that left me trembling for the rest of the night. I hated it, how I could be reduced to tears just by a simple nightmare. In my waking hours, I could barely keep my eyes open. I had nearly fallen asleep several times, whether I was sitting on something or just leaning up against it. Mathias noticed this as well.

I had already seen a doctor in a town nearby about it all, and he said it was normal. He gave me some pills to help with sleeping, and some stomach relief stuff for the vomiting. I keep them in my room under the bed, and thankfully they worked. The stomach relief did at least. The pills didn't seem to help matters, except maybe tone down the nightmares a little, and just make me restless. I stopped taking them after a week, deciding to just live with the nightmares. It was a bad decision in hindsight, but it seemed like the best choice at the time.

I stopped getting sick every night after about two weeks of it. It was an improvement, but the only one. The nightmares continued, sometimes being worse than usual. Mathias defiantly knew something was wrong by this point, because I crashed into him when walking half asleep down the hall. He confronted me one night when the others had gone into town to run a few errands before bed. It wasn't a very long conversation, especially considering I was falling asleep on my feet.

I somehow ended up confessing to him what I had been going through, and admitted how much almost drowning freaked me out. I don't know why I told him, but I did and looking back, I'm glad it was. He offered to have me sleep in his room instead, and I accepted, though I did argue a little bit at first. I figured that if sleeping alone was horrible enough, why not see if having another person nearby changed that. He attempted to hold me close at first, but I shoved him to the other side of the bed. Ironically though, I ended up clinging to him after waking up from yet another nightmare. This continued for a few days, which eventually turned into a few weeks, and eventually a month. Nothing ever happened, except for the occasional event of him kicking me out of bed in the middle of the night. In response, I shoved him off the bed and stole the covers.

Slowly though, my nightmares did fade and were soon gone completely. I did have the occasional one at least every few months, but even those weren't much compared to the ones I had had in the past.

It's been exactly two years since I almost drowned, and though my fear of water may have lessened, the memory will always be there. Tormenting me to no end.

But I have found that having someone help you fight off those memories, can make the difference.


End file.
